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Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Tao Lin, Dequan Liu, Lijun Cai, Qiang Li, Laizhong Cai, Tao Qiao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 1 | January 2018 | Pages 68-74
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1372679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The HL-2M tokamak, which is being built at the Southwestern Institute of Physics, is considered one of the most important short-pulse devices for future fusion research in China. The design criterion of the HL-2M specifies the demountable joints for the toroidal field coils (TFCs) due to the assembly requirements. A horizontal preload is needed to keep a good electrical conductance for the joint of each coil. In order to assure the appropriate preload to be exerted on the TFCs under different operation conditions and to provide the preload at 40 locations simultaneously, the horizontal preload system of the HL-2M tokomak has been developed. In this technical note, the design of this system is presented in detail. Finite element analysis is applied to evaluate the design. To validate the assembly and the performance, a prototype of the actuator has been manufactured and tested to finalize the design for fabrication.
